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.