Scrooge is an outsider because is so incredibly cold and heartless. He has spent a long time being rude to strangers, being pitiless to anyone with whom he does business, and refusing attempts to reach out to him by those few who actually care for him. Consequently, no one, except his nephew Fred, tries with him any more. In fact, even total strangers recognize that he is not the kind of person that one stops...
Scrooge is an outsider because is so incredibly cold and heartless. He has spent a long time being rude to strangers, being pitiless to anyone with whom he does business, and refusing attempts to reach out to him by those few who actually care for him. Consequently, no one, except his nephew Fred, tries with him any more. In fact, even total strangers recognize that he is not the kind of person that one stops to ask for directions or the time. The narrator says,
Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?" No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge.
No one is ever glad to see Scrooge. No one ever asks him over or asks after his health. Neither do the destitute even try to ask him for a penny. Apparently all—men, women, and children, the high and the low, those who require assistance, and those who need nothing more than directions—understand that Scrooge is awful, and so they leave him alone.
Even the blind men's dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!"
This could be an exaggeration, but it certainly drives the point home. Scrooge is so recognizably terrible that even seeing eye dogs guide their blind masters away from him.
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