Payback

Marley totes a long chain made of “cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.” He is fettered, he tells Scrooge, by the chain he forged in life — yet another example of the imagery of bondage and slavery so often associated with debt, except that now the chain is worn by the creditor. Indulging in grinding, usurious financial practices is a spiritual sin as well as a material one, for it requires a cold indifference to the needs and sufferings of others, and imprisons the sinner within himself.
Scrooge’s happy ending is therefore entirely in keeping with the cherished core beliefs of capitalism. His life pattern is worthy of Andrew Carnegie — make a bundle by squeezing and grinding, then go in for philanthropy. We love him in part because, true to the laws of wish-fulfilment, which always involve a free lunch or a get-out-of-jail card, he embodies both sides of the equation — the greedy getting and the gleeful spending — and comes out of it just fine.