ignorance and want

• Ghost of Christmas Present

  • Shows Scrooge the two children he calls Ignorance and Want
• Dickens is suggesting that the children are here in this present moment of time, their appearance in the novella cannot be ignored
• Adjectives used to describe the children

  • Wretched
  • Abject
  • Frightful
  • Hideous
  • Miserable
• Wretched


  Incredibly unhappy and unfortunate
• Abject


  Having no pride or dignity
• Frightful


  Connotes that their appearance is unpleasant and shocking
• Hideous


  Extremely ugly
• Dickens deliberately uses these adjectives to shock the reader
• The jarring change in tone created by the appearance of these children is completely out of sync with earlier celebrations
• Adjectives used to further describe the children

  • Yellow
  • Meager
  • Ragged
  • Scowling
  • Wolfish
• Yellow


  Connotes illness, possibly caused by jaundice
• Meager


  Lacking in quantity or quality, implying they are malnourished and undersized
• Ragged


  Literally wearing rags, woefully underdressed in the middle of winter
• Scowling


  Frowning in an angry bad-tempered way
• Wolfish


  Compares them to wolves, connoting they are dehumanized and more like predatory animals than children
• Dickens describes the children as monsters
• Dickens's description of the children is based on his experience in 1846 visiting a ragged school in London
• Purpose of ragged schools

  • To educate those who are too ragged, wretched, filthy and forlorn to enter any other place, who could gain admission into no charity school and who would be driven from any church door
• Attendance at ragged schools was erratic and Dickens criticized the frightful neglect by the state (government)
• Ghost of Christmas Present: 'They are man's, and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.'
• Dickens suggests that ignorance leads to want, and that education is a tool to break the cycle of poverty
• In Dickens's time, going to school was not compulsory for all children, so the poor could only hope to climb out of poverty through education