Jacob Marley

Jacob Marley is a fictional character whose ghost appears in the Charles Dickens novel, A Christmas Carol.

In life, Marley was the business partner of Ebenezer Scrooge. Earlier, both men had apprenticed in business and met as clerks (presumably in Accountancy) in another business. The firm of Scrooge and Marley was a nineteeth 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.

Both Scrooge and Marley have evolved from idealistic, ambitious clerks into astute and driven businessmen for whom money and profit is an end in and of itself.

Seven years prior to the main events of the novel, Marley contracted an unspecified illness and died on Christmas Eve. After his death, Marley's spirit was condemned to walk the Earth for all eternity. As punishment for his shutting out of his fellow man, Marley's ghost could observe, but not interact with, living beings. As an added burden, his spirit was forced to drag around a heavy chain. This chain, made up partly of money boxes, was constructed by Marley's own greed and selfishness.

Presumably, over the next seven years, Marley came to realize how wrong he had been in life. He also saw that Scrooge, his only friend in the world, was following the same path. Marley was able to procure a chance to help Scrooge avoid this fate by arranging the visitations of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future (just who or what Marley appealed to was never specified in the novel). Marley appeared to Scrooge and told him of the forthcoming visits by the three spirits of Christmas. These spirits, Marley told Scrooge, were the only chance Scrooge had for redemption.

At first Scrooge did not beleive that Marley's ghost was real, to which Marley asked, "Why do you doupt your senses?" Scrooge explained to him that he was nothing more then a figment of his imagination- "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!" Marley's only reply was a spine-chilling howl that brought Scrooge to his knees, begging for mercy. Satisfied, Marley delivered his message of the three hauntings and then vanished from sight.

Marley's gambit was successful. After the three visitations, Scrooge did amend his ways. The reader is left to imagine that even though Marley is condemned for eternity, his spirit can take some comfort in the knowledge that his friend will not share his fate.

The life and afterlife of Jacob Marley is not detailed in A Christmas Carol. We have no idea exactly how Marley escaped, presumably from hell, with an arrangement for Scrooge's redemption. Even he himself mentions that he isn't sure how he is visible to Scrooge "on this night". One interpretation has been offered in the prequel novel, Marley's Ghost, (2000) by Mark Hazard Osmun, an imagining of Marley's tragic life and subsequent sacrifice on behalf of his former partner.

The play, Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol by Tom Mula delves into the after-life adventures of Jacob Marley.