How does Charles Dickens create a sense of tension and suspense in this extract?

Charles Dickens was an author who loved to use his literature to push his moral agendas. In his novel: A Christmas Carol, he depicts his antagonist: “Scrooge,” as a miserable and grumpy aristocrat. His agenda was to show flaws and belittle people like Scrooge, and this extract is a perfect example of such. In Charles Dickens’ classic novel: A Christmas Carol, antagonist Scrooge is put through a suspenseful and tense situation in the extract given. Dickens portrays this suspense and tension through his use of language features, such as: adjectives, adverbs, similes and exaggeration, as well as leveraging limited third-person narration to create this environment as well. Firstly, Dickens’ use of adjectives and adverbs, such as: “heavy”, “clanking”, “booming”, and “loudly'' help to paint the picture of the turbulent and ominous environment. This helps to create tension and suspense because these adjectives and adverbs are used to help describe the ruckus going on in Scrooge’s house. Dickens leaves the reader unsure of what is going to happen next, opting instead to elaborate greatly on what is happening currently with his use of adjectives and adverbs, rather than eluding what is going to happen in the future: which would ruin a great deal of suspense and tension. Secondly, Dickens uses similes and exaggeration for a similar effect. For example, Dickens used the simile: “a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant’s cellar.”, as well as the exaggerated simile: “This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, But it seems like an hour” in order to create further suspense and tension in this extract. Like his use of adjectives and adverbs, these similes help to paint the picture of the environment in which Scrooge is. This helps to create tension and suspense because Dickens’ use of similes in conjunction with exaggeration especially really depicts the chaos ensuing in Scrooge’s home very well. Again, this helps Dickens to leave the reader unsure of what is going to happen in the future, instead of taking more time to focus on what is happening currently. This creates a great deal of uncertainty for the reader: which breeds suspense and tension. Lastly, Dickens leverages third-person limited narration in this extract to create tension and suspense. Firstly he does this because the main character is Scrooge, and if the novel was narrated in first-person as Scrooge, perhaps it would cause the reader to sympathize with him more, which would be against Dickens' agenda. Secondly, he does this to keep the reader guessing as to what is going to happen next. The limited style narration ensures that the reader is unaware of what is going to happen in the future, and allows the reader to also be more immersed and present while the events are unfolding in Scrooge’s home. For example, when: “The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.” In this section of the extract, the ghost of Marley is approaching Scrooge, but due to the narrator's limited knowledge, the reader is unaware of this and is just forced to absorb the information given, and make assumptions. This creates immense suspense and tension because readers have creative minds. Although Dickens alludes to the fact that it is the ghost of Marley earlier in the extract, the limited narration style: withholding the reader from confirmation that is it the ghost of Marley until the last second allows the reader to assume and believe a variety of things before ultimately discovering that it is, in fact, the ghost of Marley. Dickens designed this scenario in order to push his agenda for punishing Scrooge for being a mean and greedy aristocrat: the type of person Dickens wanted to eradicate at the time. This situation is an example of Dickens torturing this group of people through his literature, and to gain more support for the dislike of these types of people. The ghost of Marley is there to haunt him and torment him due to Scrooge’s greed and misery. It is a sort of retribution of sorts, and Dickens designed it in this way. A different interpretation could be that perhaps Dickens designed Scrooge to be a cautionary tale in the form of a character. The reason Dickens puts him through so much trauma, misery and ornament throughout the novel is to make an example out of him for the young and easily influenced young readers that this novel was targeted toward. The lesson was that, if you were miserable and greedy like Scrooge, bad things would happen to you: as depicted in the novel. Dickens’ intent with this would be to scare kids away from being like Scrooge and force them to be more compassionate and giving, in order to avoid the torment and misery that Scrooge encounters throughout the novel.