Ignorance – Moby Dick Essay, Research Paper
Ignorance
Ignorance is seen every day of our lives. Even people in the 1850?s
were aware of ignorance. Ignorance is defined as being uneducated or
resulting from or showing lack of knowledge. Ignorance can be taken to
extremes though. There is complete ignorance where the person thinks that
even though they do not understand it all they still know everything. Then
others of us say that even though I am not sure about it I am knowledgeable
to my ignorance. In Moby Dick, Ishmael?s ignorance can be related to my
own in some ways.
?The more I pondered over this harpooner, the more I abominated the
thought of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a harpooner,
his linen or woolen, as the case might be, would not be of the tidiest,
certainly not the finest. I began to twitch all over.? In this passage we can
see the ignorance that is present in Ishmael?s character. Though he knows
nothing of this harpooner, by the name of Queequeg, he fears him. In an
ideal scene this wouldn?t happen. Judgement of Queequeg happens before he
even enters the book at a leading character and without Ishmael?s real
knowledge. Ishmael states that his body begins to twitch, because he is so
nervous and so afraid of the untidiness or barbaric qualities that this
unknown character may possess.
Unfortunately enough people actually think like that, even now over
100 years later. It?s amazing that we haven?t picked up on this and tried to
change. In my own life I know I am ignorant, but I try to be knowledgeable
instead. However cases like this are much too common. When meeting
someone for the first time I often characterize how I think they are going to
be by just things I have heard prior to the meeting, how other?s like this
would act, or even a little assumption on what the name might bring in means
of connotations. It?s sad, but unfortunately I am sometimes guilty of it.
One passage in this book that I specifically find intriguing is that in
which Queequeg tells us that a high commander of a merchant ship that once
was invited to a wedding feast in Queequeg?s homeland, the island of
Cokovoko. At these specific feasts there could be found a sort of punch
bowl in which fragrant water is contained and is a grand central ornament of
the feast. This commander took upon himself to wash his hands in the bowl.
He did this because he was ignorant of the purpose it actually proved, but
before we can laugh at this we would have to turn the tables. The first time
that Queequeg encountered a wheelbarrow was at Sag Harbor in which the
owners of the ship lent a wheelbarrow to Queequeg to help carry his chest.
Not ever seeing one of these, he put the chest on it and then marches up the
wharf shouldering the wheelbarrow. Both of these are examples of ignorance
but we see both sides now. One from how someone such as Queequeg
would do then something that we would typically laugh at, because of course
we know the proper way to use a wheelbarrow. The other account may not
be as humorous, because as you sit there reading this passage you could think
to yourself, ?Hey, I might have done the same thing if I hadn?t been told what
the punchbowl-like container was.?
This is yet another example that I can reflect upon myself. From
culture to culture you get a very different way of doing things, saying things,
and just a general difference. The way I experienced this was this past
summer when I stayed in Germany for a month. There I attended 10th grade
classes for the four weeks of my stay. I was completely ignorant of
differences in our systems. Though my ignorance was not to the extreme that
I thought I was better, I was just unaware of how things varied between
Germany and the way we do things in the United States. After a while of
being there though and experiencing some of these differences I learned that
maybe we don?t have everything exactly right at home. Instead I was open to
change, and I was more able to understand a person?s differences instead of
just looking at them funny when they mention a way that conflicts with my
way of doing something.
Though ignorance will always be around, as time goes on maybe the
ways to deal with it will get better. As Ishmael understands by stating that
ignorance is the ?parent of fear? people can still be ignorant but
knowledgeable at the same time. If you admit to yourself that you are in fact
ignorant of something then your chances of opening your mind to further
educated yourself about a certain difference increase immensely.