Mr. Fezziwig is a minor character from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
Background[]
Personality[]
As is the case with most adaptations, Fezziwig is portrayed as a joyous and jolly person, basically the total opposite of who Scrooge would grow up to be. He is also apparently a smart person as he ran a rather successful business, but was kind enough to set aside everything so that his young apprentices Scrooge and Dick Wilkins. He represents the idea of profit maximization through the act of generosity to his employees and was implied to have had a positive impact on those around him.
Physical appearance[]
Fezziwig is a short and greatly stout fellow. He wears a whit powdered wig, and a nice blue waistcoat. Despite having a rotund body, his arms and legs are rather wiry, fitting, as he appears light on his feet.
Role in the film[]
He is a seemingly prosperous London businessman to whom both the young Ebenezer Scrooge and Jacob Marley were apprenticed. A jovial and in most versions rotund fellow, he serves as an odd counterpoint to Scrooge. On the one hand, he embodies all the lessons about life Scrooge has lost and rejected.
On the other hand, when Scrooge sees him in the vision provided by the Ghost of Christmas Past, he is clearly delighted and overjoyed, and in most versions makes it clear that his beloved former employer has passed on. In some versions, young Scrooge briefly bemoans the expense of the party, but quickly becomes just as eager to get to what even older Scrooge readily admits was a wondrous event, Fezziwig's Christmas party.
Unlike his time as a young boy, there is no misery or loneliness here, and he even has a best friend in Dick Wilkins, whom he says he was inseparable from. It is at one of Fezziwig's Christmas parties that he meets the love of his life, Belle.
Fezziwig's physical description and demeanor again seems almost a point-by-point inversion of Scrooge's description as the story begins. Some versions add why and how Scrooge left his employ, but in most, it is simply implied that this was after all an apprenticeship, and that Scrooge was expected to go his own way eventually. Even without acrimony between the two, it is shown how Scrooge in the name of greed ended up forgetting what he plainly saw as the best part of his life, and the reminder of the Ghost is a major step in his path to redemption.
Disney characters portraying Fezziwig[]
- J. Thaddeus Toad - Portrayed the role of Fezziwig in Mickey's Christmas Carol.
- Fozzie Bear - Portrayed Fezziwig in The Muppet Christmas Carol.
- Fozziwig (Fozzie's version of the character)
External links[]
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