Weekly Holiday Reader: Marley's Ghost by Mark Hazard Osmun; Dickensian Mystical Holiday Treat About Ebenezer Scrooge's Late Partner

Weekly Holiday Reader: Marley's Ghost by Mark Hazard Osmun; Dickensian Mystical Holiday Treat About Ebenezer Scrooge's Late Partner

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews


Spoilers: In my previous entry, I wrote about one of my Favorite Holiday Reading Traditions, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum. Now I will mention Favorite Holiday Reading Traditions #2: Marley's Ghost by Mark Hazard Osmun.


Now I love Charles Dickens’ original work, A Christmas Carol. (My family and I watch the wonderful 1984 version starring George C. Scott every Christmas Eve.) It is a creepy, dark but moving story about redemption and kindness that can be found within the most curmudgeonly soul. However, Marley's Ghost plays on one of my favorite tropes: telling a familiar story from another point of view. (See my list “Our Sides of the Story” for other examples. Some pictures are missing.) This time the spotlight is on Jacob Marley, Scrooge's former partner and for a time only friend.


Marley gets a very detailed back story that is rich in Dickensian situations such as a once happy family's fall into ruin, debtor’s prison, terrible working conditions that are dying to be unionized, colorful crooks with equally colorful names, intense poverty, and angelic children that are too good for this sinful earth. As Marley lays dying and the Reader waits for him to enter his destiny of an afterlife bound in chains, his life flashes before his eyes. He recalls his childhood as Jake Turner and his once happy family of a loving God-fearing mother, a charming yarn spinning father who tells his children the Pagan seasonal legends, and a sweet twin brother, Ezra, who appears to be on the autism spectrum. Some of the sweetest moments are when Jake and Ezra communicate in a secret language as Jake, a Mathematics genius, sketches numbers, equations, and figures while Ezra, a musical prodigy, responds either by singing or playing instruments like the piano or a whistle.


Unfortunately trouble strikes the Turner Family when Jake's father is driven to suicide because of threats of debtor's prison. Jake, Ezra, and their mother work in the mines where she dies shortly thereafter. By themselves, Jake and Ezra are forced to endure the living Hell of hard work, dangerous situations, and inhuman employers who treat their miners as nothing more than disposable sources of income. During a particularly intense moment between Jake and his supervisors, he is separated from Ezra and framed for murder. In prison, Jake encounters the roguish Bill Worthy, who hires the young genius as an assistant and later partner and gives him a new name: Jacob Marley. (Based on Three-Jack-Maul, a card game which Jake had the advantage because of his knowledge of probability and card counting.)

Marley's rise to success is encountered with various moments that are designed to destroy his soul leading him to guide Scrooge in becoming “the grasping covetous old sinner” that we know from the opening pages of Dickens's Christmas classic. Marley is surrounded by scoundrels and rich cutthroats that would sell their children for a seat on the Exchange. No better or worse than these mentors, Marley simply seeks to outdo them in dirty dealings and profiting off of others’ suffering. Scrooge enters his life as a wide-eyed idealistic young clerk and slowly devolves into a cantankerous angry recluse shattered by his sister's death in childbirth and absorbs Marley's misotheism (hatred towards God) and anger at the world. Marley's influence on Scrooge is so great that it is no surprise that he forces Marley to sign papers on his deathbed making Scrooge his sole executioner.

The most fascinating passages are those set in the Afterlife which appears to be a composite of Christian and Pagan beliefs of the Other Side. (no doubt mirroring Marley's dual belief system growing up with a Christian mother and a father who had no specific beliefs but was knowledgeable about the Celtic myths and legends.) Neither in Heaven nor Hell Marley wanders in a desolate snowy land assumed to be Purgatory where he wears “the chains (he) forged in life.” (One graphic moment features Marley longing to rescue a suffering homeless woman and despairs when he sees other bound ghosts, including people he recognizes such as Worthy, his colleagues at the Exchange and the mine, and a Hellfire-and-Brimstone pastor at his family's church, despairing for the same reason.) He is guided by a mysterious figure named Brighton who though not in Dickens’ story will be familiar with readers of the Bible. Much of Marley's journey culminates in his self-actualization of his anger at God for the things that he had to endure and his renunciation of that rage.

Pagan beliefs are also revealed throughout the book. The Three Christmas Ghosts are revealed to be figured from Celtic and Teutonic lore. Past is the childlike Pooka, a shapeshifter that can assume any form from a wolf, to a child, to an old man. Present is Ruprecht, a hedonistic giant who is surrounded by good food, merry music, and children who had been denied fun in their lives but can experience in the Afterlife. Future is Berchta, an elderly female death spirit who protects those who have been murdered, abandoned, and taken before their time. (Foreshadowing their involvement in Scrooge's life the three each give Marley a command to “Make Scrooge…” “Remember.” “Dance.” “Fear.” Each shows their connections to childhood, adulthood, and death.)

The ghosts surround the living adhering to Pagan beliefs that the links between the Mortal and Spirit World are weak especially in certain times of the year like the Solstice and Christmas. Also there are restrictions in which ghosts cannot be seen only heard as is revealed in a heartbreaking moment between Marley and Ezra.

The book culminates in a decision where Marley has to choose to communicate with only one mortal: Scrooge or Ezra. (Not exactly a spoiler in revealing who he chooses. The book even makes it clear when Marley realizes that Ezra is in a better position than when Marley left him, lovingly cared for and accepted by friends and a surrogate family. He is aware that “saving Ezra only saves (Marley).”)

Marley's moments with Scrooge are just as powerful in Osman's writing as they are in Dickens's particularly when Marley vicariously watches his old friend's transformation with happy tears and realizes Scrooge in turn saved him.

Marley's Ghost is a great companion to A Christmas Carol. It builds on Dickens's work about the supernatural, charity, redemption, and friendship. It also should stand on its own as a powerful story in its own right.