Who is Bob Cratchit?
Bob Cratchit is the clerk who works for Scrooge, copying letters in a freezing office for a tiny wage of fifteen shillings a week. He is poor, overworked and powerless, entirely dependent on a mean employer who will not even give him enough coal to keep warm. In worldly terms he has almost nothing.
Yet Dickens presents him as one of the richest characters in the book, because he is warm, patient and full of love. His home may be humble and his Christmas dinner small, but it is filled with affection and gratitude. Bob is Dickens's answer to the idea that the poor are worthless: a good, dignified man whose value has nothing to do with money.
Bob Cratchit's role in the novella
Bob Cratchit's role is to put a human face on the working poor, so that Scrooge, and the reader, cannot dismiss them as an abstract 'surplus population'. When the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge to the Cratchit home, we see a family celebrating Christmas joyfully despite having so little, and it is this warmth that first stirs real tenderness in Scrooge. Bob makes poverty personal and sympathetic.
He also acts as a quiet rebuke to Scrooge. Bob works directly for Scrooge and is kept poor by him, yet at Christmas dinner he still toasts his employer as "the Founder of the Feast", showing a generosity of spirit Scrooge entirely lacks. And through his devotion to the frail Tiny Tim, Bob raises the emotional stakes of the whole novella: it is the threat to Tim, and Bob's grief in the vision of the future, that move Scrooge most deeply. Structurally, the Cratchits are the heart Dickens uses to warm the story.
How Bob Cratchit changes
Bob Cratchit does not really change across the novella, because his goodness is constant, and that constancy is the point. He is the fixed example of warmth and dignity against which Scrooge's coldness is measured, and later, the family whose fortunes Scrooge's change will improve. What develops is not Bob himself but the reader's, and Scrooge's, appreciation of him.
The one place we see Bob shaken is in the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come's vision, where Tiny Tim has died and Bob is broken by grief, crying "My little, little child!" That glimpse of a good man suffering the loss of his son is one of the novella's most moving moments, and it is partly what drives Scrooge to change. In the end, Bob's steadiness is rewarded: the transformed Scrooge raises his wages and helps his family, so the good man's patience finally meets the generosity it always deserved.
Key Bob Cratchit quotes
“he had but fifteen 'Bob' a-week himself”
Where: Stave 1Establishes Bob's poverty and Scrooge's meanness in one detail. The playful nickname 'Bob' for a shilling adds warmth even to his hardship. Argue that Dickens makes us feel the injustice of how little Scrooge pays him.
“as good as gold, and better”
Where: Stave 3, on Tiny TimBob's loving description of his son. It shows his tenderness as a father and his ability to find richness in family rather than money. Use it to contrast Bob's real wealth, love, with Scrooge's empty material wealth.
“the Founder of the Feast”
Where: Stave 3Bob's Christmas toast to Scrooge, despite Scrooge's meanness. It reveals a generosity of spirit Scrooge lacks entirely. Argue that Dickens uses Bob's grace to shame Scrooge and to show goodness independent of wealth.
“My little, little child!”
Where: Stave 4Bob's grief over the dead Tiny Tim in the vision of the future. The repetition of 'little' makes the loss unbearably tender. Use it to show the emotional stakes that drive Scrooge to change, and the humanity of the poor.
Bob Cratchit and the novella's themes
Bob Cratchit is your key character for the dignity of the poor and for family. Dickens uses him to prove that the working poor are warm, loving and valuable, directly countering Scrooge's contempt for them. He also embodies the true Christmas spirit, gratitude and love in the face of hardship.
He supports the theme of social responsibility, since his poverty is the direct result of Scrooge's meanness and improves only when Scrooge changes, and he raises the theme of compassion through his devotion to Tiny Tim. Connect him to these ideas on the A Christmas Carol themes page.
Context: what Bob Cratchit represents
Bob Cratchit represents the huge number of poorly paid clerks and workers in Victorian Britain, people who worked long hours for wages that barely kept a family alive, entirely at the mercy of their employers. By making Bob so sympathetic, Dickens challenges the common attitude, voiced by Scrooge, that the poor were lazy or worthless and deserved their hardship.
His situation also dramatises the responsibility employers had, and often ignored. Scrooge could easily afford to pay Bob more and treat him better, and the novella's happy ending, in which he does exactly that, is Dickens showing his wealthy readers what they ought to do. The contrast with Fezziwig, the generous employer from Scrooge's past, reinforces the point. For the exam, the useful point is that Bob Cratchit humanises the poor and embodies Dickens's argument that goodness and dignity have nothing to do with wealth, and that the rich have a duty to treat their workers with decency.
How to write about Bob Cratchit in the exam
Write about Bob Cratchit as Dickens's human face of the poor, whose warmth refutes Scrooge's contempt. Contrast his real wealth, love and family, with his material poverty, using 'the Founder of the Feast' to show a generosity of spirit that shames his employer. His grief, 'My little, little child!', is your evidence of the emotional stakes that move Scrooge.
For a perceptive point, argue that Bob's poverty is the direct product of Scrooge's meanness, making him a living example of the employer's responsibility Dickens is preaching. Bring in the context of underpaid Victorian workers and the contrast with Fezziwig. Connect him to his son on the Tiny Tim page and to his mean employer on the Scrooge page, and learn his lines on the key quotes page.
Study Bob Cratchit alongside his son Tiny Tim and against his employer Scrooge, whose change finally rewards him. Connect him to the novella's ideas on the A Christmas Carol themes page and the key quotes page.