Buckwald examines the theme of restriction and containment in A Christmas Carol, as exemplified by the description of Scrooge as "solitary as an oyster."

Oh' but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge¹ a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner' Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster

If at the beginning of A Christmas Carol Ebenezer Scrooge apparently lacks a heart, he is at all times the undisputed heart of the story he inhabits. It is thus entirely fitting that this formal introduction to the miser's objectionable qualities, occurring in the piece's sixth paragraph, anticipates much in the narrative fabric that follows. We could, for example, profitably begin an interpretation of the tale with the first two figures in the description—the "tight-fisted hand" and the unproductive...