ignorance & want

• Ignorance and want are allegorical characters (important in the story, represent abstract meanings and ideas) who aim to highlight the unjustified abuse of innocent children as a result of poverty.
• Dickens personifies poverty through the boy and girl.
• Their skin colour does not resemble that of a young healthy child as it is "yellow".

  • The colour could imply that children are physically sick and malnourished because of the neglection of society and the obliviousness of individuals to social injustice.
• Their skin colour does not resemble that of a young healthy child as it is "yellow".

  • Alternatively, "yellow" connotates sickness mirroring how the upper class believed that poverty was almost alike to a contagious illness or sickness.

  Thus, the upper-class members like Scrooge in society, felt it was easier to distance themselves from this 'disease' of poverty as oppose to helping them.
• There is a feral and animalistic portrayal of the children as they're described as "scowling" and "wolfish".

  • This animalistic image highlights how poverty dehumanises individuals, stripping them of their humanity and reducing them to less than an animalistic state of being.

  Alternatively, the animalistic dehumanising portrayal could be an attack on the rich's dehumanising treatment of the lower classes.
• Dickens makes Scrooge, an extension of the ignorant rich, to meet the dehumanised poor for a sense of justice for his readership.

  • The rich are being forced to recognise how they are perpetuating (making something continue indefinitely) poverty and animalising the poor.
• It is significant that the ghost of Christmas present shows him Ignorance & Want, as Dickens uses the ghost as a mouthpiece to criticise the socio-economic poverty that pervaded Victorian society.
• Dickens wants to warn his readers that they must "Beware them both" as it is easy to be the plight (unfortunate/dangerous situation) of others and only focus on your "want" for more.

  • Dickens used these allegorical characters to make his reader reflective of their social conscience and if they are "ignorant" and "want".