6.1.4

Ignorance & Want Quotes

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Ignorance and Want

Dickens used the characters of Ignorance and Want (hidden under the robes of the Ghost of Christmas Present) to highlight a lot of the problems in the world.

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“Wretched, abject, frightful..."

  • “Two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable”.
    • These children are allegories of two social problems (they represent these problems in human form – this is also why their names have capital letters).
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"Yellow, meagre..."

  • “They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish”.
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“They are Man’s”

  • Through the Ghost, Dickens tells the reader: “They are Man’s”, encouraging readers to take some responsibility for other people.
    • Dickens uses Ignorance to chastise the Victorian reader, attempting to make them realise that they were ignoring the problems in their own society.
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Message for society

  • “Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing”.
    • Dickens wanted to show that, by ignoring these issues, society would produce children like this – they are shown to be dirty, with no hope of a good future.

Jump to other topics

1Plot Summary

2Key Characters & Quotes

3Key Ideas

4Context

5Authorial Method

6Recap: Main Quotes

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