Ignorance and Want

Ignorance and Want are two allegorical children revealed by the Ghost of Christmas Present, representing the social evils of ignorance and poverty that threaten humanity, and serving as a stark warning to Scrooge and to society.

Revelation and Appearance

Late in the night, as the Ghost of Christmas Present begins to age and its time grows short, Scrooge notices something strange protruding from the folds of the Spirit's robe. When the Ghost sorrowfully bids him look, it brings forth two children from its garment: a boy and a girl. They are described as wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, and miserable, kneeling at the Spirit's feet and clinging to the outside of its garment. Their appearance is monstrous: yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, and wolfish, yet prostrate in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, has pinched and twisted them. The narrative declares that no change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity has produced monsters half so horrible and dread. Scrooge is appalled and starts back; when he tries to say they are fine children, the words choke themselves rather than be party to such a lie.

Identity and Meaning

The Ghost identifies the children directly: "This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want." They are not the Spirit's own offspring but belong to Man, and they cling to the Ghost, appealing from their fathers. The Spirit warns Scrooge to beware of them both and all of their degree, but most of all to beware the boy, Ignorance, for on his brow is written that which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. The Ghost then stretches out its hand towards the city and cries out against those who would deny this truth, slander those who tell it, or admit it for factious purposes and make it worse, bidding them to "bide the end." When Scrooge asks if they have no refuge or resource, the Spirit turns on him for the last time with Scrooge's own earlier words: "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?" This direct echo of Scrooge's dismissive response to the charity collectors earlier on Christmas Eve forces him to confront the consequences of his own philosophy.

Thematic Significance and Warning

Ignorance and Want function as the climax of the Ghost of Christmas Present's lesson, moving from the warmth of domestic celebrations to a cold, allegorical indictment of societal neglect. They are the dark underside of the festive abundance the Spirit has shown—the poverty and ignorance that persist despite Christmas cheer. The boy Ignorance is singled out as the more dangerous of the two, with Doom written on his brow, suggesting that willful ignorance, more than material want, leads to societal catastrophe. The Spirit's rebuke directly challenges Scrooge's earlier callous remark about the "surplus population," implying that such dehumanizing logic is itself a form of the ignorance that must be erased. The children are not merely pathetic figures but active threats, described with wolfish and monstrous imagery, and their presence underscores the book's social critique: that the suffering of the poor is not an inevitable fact but a consequence of human choices and systems, and that ignoring it invites destruction.

The allegorical figures of Ignorance and Want were directly inspired by Dickens's firsthand encounters with the suffering of poor children in the early 1840s. In early 1843, he toured the Cornish tin mines and was angered by the appalling conditions in which children worked; this experience was reinforced by a visit to the Field Lane Ragged School, a London institution for half-starved, illiterate street children. That same year, the Second Report of the Children's Employment Commission exposed the devastating effects of the Industrial Revolution on working-class children. Horrified, Dickens initially planned to publish a political pamphlet titled An Appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man's Child, but he soon realized that a Christmas narrative would carry far more force. In a speech at the Manchester Athenaeum in October 1843, he urged workers and employers to combat ignorance through educational reform, and in the following days he decided to channel his social concerns into A Christmas Carol, believing that a deeply felt story would reach a broader audience than any polemical essay.