The resistance to the supernatural in A Christmas Carol

In A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, the protagonist Scrooge desperately tries to explain the fantastic apparitions through rationalism. Faced with the face of Marley on his door, the old miser dismisses the phenomenon with a shrug and repeats the word humbug nine times in the space of a single page. This stubborn attitude forces the narrator to simulate distress to convince a reader initially as skeptical as his character.