No movie version of A Christmas Carol has ever done justice to Dickens' own imagination in regards to the varied thoughts of Scrooge in between the first two spirits. Scrooge awakens "in the right nick of time" before the clock strikes, and is moved to pull the curtains of his bed back himself (so that some unknown spirit doesn't do it). After Scrooge does this, Dickens describes Scrooge's general thoughts:
I don't mind calling on you to believe that he was ready for a good broad field of strange appearances, and that nothing between a baby and a rhinoceros would have astonished him very much.
In other words, Scrooge was almost ready for anything. Almost, that is, because what he got was "nothing." There is genius in Dickens' next line:
Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by any means prepared for nothing.
In other words, the only thing that happened was that Scrooge simply stayed in bed being "the core and centre of a blaze of ruddy light." After a fit of sudden trembling which lasted quite a while, Scrooge begins thinking about the source of the light hitting him. Dickens is quick to mention that we, as readers, would have thought of that first, but since it is Scrooge who was in the predicament, his mind wasn't clear enough to manage it. Scrooge determines that the light is coming from the next room. As soon as Scrooge ventures over there and begins to turn the door knob, he is called by name.
The fabulous irony here is that Dickens' readers are thinking more clearly than his main character. I suppose that Scrooge can no longer utter his famous word of "humbug."
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