Ignorance

Ignorance is one of the two appalling children—a boy and a girl—whom the Ghost of Christmas Present conceals beneath his robe and reveals to Scrooge late on Christmas night. The boy is named Ignorance; his sister is Want. Together they represent the twin scourges that the Spirit warns are the most dangerous products of a society that neglects its poor. The Ghost presents them not as his own offspring but as belonging to mankind, and he charges Scrooge—and through him the reader—to beware of them above all else.

Appearance and Nature

The Ghost of Christmas Present brings Ignorance and Want forth from the foldings of his robe as wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, and miserable creatures. They kneel at the Spirit's feet and cling to the outside of his garment. The boy is described as yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, and wolfish, yet also prostrate in humility. Where graceful youth should have filled out their features and touched them with fresh tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, has pinched, twisted, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurk and glare out menacingly. The narrator declares that no change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity in any grade through all the mysteries of creation has produced monsters half so horrible and dread. Scrooge is appalled and tries to say they are fine children, but the words choke themselves rather than be party to such a lie.

The Ghost's Warning

The Ghost of Christmas Present speaks with urgent gravity about the boy Ignorance. He tells Scrooge that the children are Man's and that they cling to him, appealing from their fathers. He then issues his most dire warning: "Beware of 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." The Spirit stretches out his hand toward the city and challenges those who would deny this truth, slander those who tell it, or admit it for factious purposes and make it worse, commanding them to "bide the end." When Scrooge asks if they have no refuge or resource, the Ghost turns on him for the last time with Scrooge's own earlier words: "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?" This bitter echo links Ignorance directly to the miser's own cruel philosophy of social neglect.

Thematic Significance

Ignorance functions as the story's most pointed social critique, moving beyond individual redemption to address systemic evil. The boy is not a supernatural being but a human product—the consequence of a society that, like Scrooge before his transformation, refuses to see the poor as fellow passengers to the grave. The Ghost's insistence that Ignorance is more dangerous than Want reflects a belief that willful ignorance—of the poor, of suffering, of one's own moral obligations—is the root cause of social injustice. The writing of Doom on his brow suggests that if this ignorance is not erased, it will lead to catastrophe, not just for the ignorant but for the entire social order. Scrooge's own journey from ignorance to knowledge—from dismissing the poor as "surplus population" to becoming a second father to Tiny Tim—enacts the erasure the Ghost demands. The figure of Ignorance thus serves as the negative pole against which Scrooge's redemption is measured: he must learn to see, to know, and to act.