The chains are first used (very effectively) to create anxiety and dread in Scrooge. Further, they represent the chains that, first, tie the ghosts between the dead and the living, and second, they symbolize Scrooge's dreadful fate, if he doesn't change his ways.
Marleys chain is made from steel purses, ledgers, cashboxes, keys, and his office materials.
It was forged by aspects of his life
Jacob Marley
Marley was wrapped about his bodies in a chain he forged in life. It was decked out with iron keys, ledgers safes and cash boxes . These represented his life's focus on making money and ignoring the plight of mankind around him
Marley's ghost in "A Christmas Carol" is often described as a heavy chain-clad specter, akin to a burdened, dragging anchor of guilt and remorse.
In Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Jacob Marley says that his chains are "forged out of life," meaning that all of the bad things that he did in his life came back to haunt him and are symbolized in the form of the chains.
It symbolises his sins; he himself forged each of fragment with every bad decision he had taken.
A chain made up of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.
Jacob Marley's chains were made of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. These items symbolize his earthly attachments and sins that weigh him down in the afterlife, as depicted in Charles Dickens' novel "A Christmas Carol."
Marley explains "I wear the chain I forged in life,'' replied the Ghost. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?" Marleys chain contains the things thatwere to him important in life these included iron ketys iron clad ledgers, iron clad purses and of course the links themselves. The chain there represents when he classed as importatnt in life and s it was all based around money and none of it about helping others the chain was a burden of punsihment to worn for eternity
The first is used to descrive Marley "He was dead, as dead as a door nail" and the houses opposite were mere phantoms
The chain in Charles Dickens' novella "A Christmas Carol" is made up of the items of greed and selfishness that Jacob Marley accumulated in his lifetime as a heavy burden to him in the afterlife. It represents the weight of his sins and acts as a warning to Ebenezer Scrooge to change his ways before it's too late.