Ignorance & Want Quotes
English Lit: AQA GCSE A Christmas Carol, topic 6.1.4
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.
“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).
"Yellow, meagre..."
- “They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish”.
“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.
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.
Test yourself on Ignorance & Want Quotes
What are Ignorance and Want allegories of?