ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by ghosts,

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haunting houses since the beginning of houses and, uh,

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well, tormenting Pacman since 1980.

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Check out the following passage.

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Marley was dead...

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All right, Marley was probably, uh, what?

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And here are the potential answers.

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All right.

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Well, lots of ghosts visit Scrooge in A Christmas Carol -

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fat ones, thin ones, ones that are basically the Grim Reaper.

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But what do we know about ghost man Marley here?

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Well, the passage makes no mention of his age.

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We know he was a businessman, Scrooge's partner,

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but we're not provided any other information,

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so there's no reason to infer he died very young or very old.

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For all we know, he might have just

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died at a very normal age. So we can rule out options A and B.

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And the text doesn't indicate whether or not Marley had a large

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family. Scrooge was Marley's only friend and the only

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person at his funeral.

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Mike Brady, he was not.

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But the fact that he only had one mourner does indicate one thing.

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He probably wasn't the nicest guy in the world.

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So option C is the best answer.

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Still, at least he made a scary ghost.

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Probably would've had Pacman shaking in his boots.

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[ scream ]

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