"Рождество Кэрола: Жақұб Марлидің әруағы"

Ghost in A Christmas Carol (1843)

Jacob Marley is a fictional character in Charles Dickens's 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. Marley has been dead for seven years, and was a former business partner of the miser Ebenezer Scrooge, the novella's protagonist. On Christmas Eve, Scrooge is visited by Marley's ghost, who wanders the Earth entwined by heavy chains and money boxes forged during a lifetime of greed and selfishness. Marley tells Scrooge that he has a single chance of redemption to avoid the same fate: he will be visited by three spirits, in the hope that he will mend his ways; otherwise, he will be cursed to carry much heavier chains of his own. In the novella, Marley and Scrooge 'were partners for I don't know how many years' unbeknown to Scrooge after death Marley is forced to roam the earth in Purgatory, fettered in chains, cash boxes and ledger books, desperately wanting to help the poor and needy but unable to do so. On the seventh anniversary of his death on Christmas Eve, the ghost of Jacob Marley, in his torment, appears to Scrooge in his rooms:
<blockquote>
Marley in his pig tail, usual waistcoat, tights, and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling like his pig tail, and his coat skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.' for Scrooge to be visited by three Spirits who will offer him the chance of escaping the same fate. Marley warns Scrooge to expect the first Spirit when the clock tolls one, the second upon the next night at the same hour, and the third upon the third night when the clock has reached the last stroke of twelve, regardless of Scrooge's suggestion for them to come all at once. Marley tells Scrooge that he will not see him again and leaves the room through the open window where he joins other souls in limbo outside who are tormented by their inability to help the poor and needy in death, as they should have done in life. and to act as a herald for the three Ghosts of Christmas who are to come. Marley's intercession with some higher Power, so that Scrooge will not share Marley's fate, is provided as the explanation for the supernatural visitors who are to follow. The book makes it clear from the start that Old Marley was as "dead as a door nail", The reader's understanding of this fact makes Marley's later appearance before Scrooge all the more shocking. Dickens writes, 'Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course, he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner.' The two men were business partners and probably little else. Despite Scrooge's fearful comment that 'You were always a good friend to me, Jacob', it is unlikely that the two were actually close, as even on the day of Marley's funeral, Scrooge takes time out to make a good business deal. Indeed, the ghosts that Scrooge sees outside his window are similarly fettered with objects associated with the sins committed in their lives:
Every one of them wore chains like Marley's Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever. Clearly, these tormented souls outside the window, like Marley and Scrooge, are guilty of having failed to help those in need while they were alive; now they are dead, it is too late, and the chains with which they too are fettered were also forged by them in life and girded on of their own free will. They are imprisoned by their chains in the same way prisoners would have been fettered in Victorian gaols. None of the spectres wear their chains willingly. While normally chains would be forged from metal, Marley's chains are forged from what he valued in life — money and material wealth. Attached to Marley's chain are ledgers and cash boxes, with each object symbolising money making – his priority in life – and how he failed to act to help others. Each of the other spectres similarly has attached to them the heavy symbols of their former trades. The old ghost that Scrooge recognises has a monstrous iron safe attached to his chain, perhaps showing that, like Scrooge, he was a miser who hoarded his money instead of helping those in need. He is a kindred spirit to Scrooge, which is perhaps why Scrooge recognizes him. It is apparent that these ghosts, like Marley, are suffering because it is now too late for them to help the living and they now have no chance of redemption – to put things right. The chain with which Scrooge is unknowingly girded would be stronger and heavier and more ponderous than that about Marley as Scrooge has been working on it for seven years more through each act of indifference to those about him. and the historian Daisy Dunn is that Dickens was influenced by the writings of Pliny the Younger, In 1825 the young Dickens was sent to Wellington House Classical and Commercial Academy where in 1827 he won the Latin prize. It may have been as part of his studies that he first encountered Pliny's ghostly tale. However, Dunn states that in his library Dickens had a copy of The Philosophy of Mystery by Walter Cooper Dendy, The book also relates Pliny's description of the haunting of the house in Athens, which was bought by the Stoic philosopher Athenodorus, who lived about 100 years before Pliny. Knowing that the house was supposedly haunted, Athenodorus intentionally set up his writing desk in the room where the apparition was said to appear and sat there writing until late at night when he was disturbed by a ghost which came at first to the door and then into the chamber, and who, like Marley, was bound in chains. Pliny wrote to his friend Sura that "In the dead of the night a noise, resembling the clashing of iron, was frequently heard, which, if you listened more attentively, sounded like the rattling of fetters; at first it seemed at a distance, but approached nearer by degrees; immediately afterward a phantom appeared in the form of an old man, extremely meagre and squalid, with a long beard and bristling hair; rattling the gyves on his feet and hands." Athenodorus followed the ghost outside where it indicated a spot on the ground. When Athenodorus later excavated the area, a shackled skeleton was unearthed. The haunting ceased when the skeleton was given a proper reburial. For the chained Marley, Dickens possibly also drew on his memory of a visit to the Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in March 1842, where he saw—and was affected by seeing—fettered prisoners and wondered whether they were "nightly visited by spectres". When Dickens was young, he lived in lodgings at 10 Norfolk Street (present day 22 Cleveland Street), in London's Fitzrovia district, just yards away from a local cheesemonger called Marley and near also to a tradesman's premises with the sign "Goodge and Marney", either of which may have provided the name for Scrooge and his former business partner though Dr Marley is much more likely.

Marley is the subject of the novel Jacob Marley's Ghost by Michael Fridgen (2019), Marley by Jon Clinch (2019) and Jacob T. Marley by R. William Bennett (2011). The song "Jacob Marley's Chain" appears on Aimee Mann's first solo album, Whatever (1993). The American bluegrass band Marley's Ghost is named for the character. It has existed since the mid 1980s and has recorded 12 albums.