Moby Dick Essay, Research Paper

Ignorance Ignorance is seen every twenty-four hours of our lives. Even people in the 1850? s were cognizant of ignorance. Ignorance is defined as being uneducated or ensuing from or demoing deficiency of cognition. Ignorance can be taken to extremes though. There is complete ignorance where the individual thinks that even though they do non understand it all they still know everything. Then others of us say that even though I am non certain about it I am knowing to my ignorance. In Moby Dick, Ishmael? s ignorance can be related to my ain in some ways. “ The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated the idea of kiping with him. It was just to assume that being a harpooneer, his linen or woollen, as the instance might be, would non be of the tidiest, surely non the finest. I began to jerk all over. ” In this transition we can see the ignorance that is present in Ishmael? s character. Though he knows nil of this harpooneer, by the name of Queequeg, he fears him. In an ideal scene this wouldn? t happen. Opinion of Queequeg happens before he even enters the book at a prima character and without Ishmael? s existent cognition. Ishmael states that his organic structure begins to jerk, because he is so nervous and so afraid of the untidiness or barbarian qualities that this unknown character may possess. Unfortunately adequate people really think like that, even now over 100 old ages subsequently. It? s astonishing that we haven? T picked up on this and tried to alter. In my ain life I know I am nescient, but I try to be knowing alternatively. However instances like this are much excessively common. When run intoing person for the first clip I frequently characterize how I think they are traveling to be by merely things I have heard prior to the meeting, how other? s like this would move, or even a small premise on what the name might convey in agencies of intensions. It? s sad, but unluckily I am sometimes guilty of it. One transition in this book that I specifically find intriguing is that in which Queequeg tells us that a high commanding officer of a merchandiser ship that one time was invited to a nuptials banquet in Queequeg? s fatherland, the island of Cokovoko. At these specific banquets there could be found a kind of clout bowl in which fragrant H2O is contained and is a expansive centr

al 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.