Dorian Gray Ignorance

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In both books we see it as a recurring theme that man can often act with ignorance towards their actions and the consequences of said actions. It is part human nature to act out of impulse once in a while, so we do this more often in our daily life than we could ever car to realize. It can something as simple as jaywalking; people don’t think about too much but it can cause a lot of accidents and have serious repercussions for both pedestrians and drivers. In The Picture of Dorian Gray there is ignorance on every corner. When Dorian falls in love with Sybil Vane, the actress, and then she leaves her because he decides he was in love with her acting he was clearly not thinking about what his actions would bring. Because of his ignorance Sybil…show more content…
The symbol that best fits this description is Kurtz’s painting. The blindfold is of course society and it creates a shroud of ignorance that keeps the lady from seeing either the torch or the darkness around her. Europe in Heart of Darkness is a great example of this. People are conditioned to ignore what is being done in Africa, thus they lack the knowledge to condemn it as right or wrong. Ignorance can come in many forms, another of which is false knowledge. If you give people the wrong information, or simply tell them a lie you are making them ignorant to the truth. Marlow makes use of this technique with Kurtz’s Intended; he told her a lie regarding Kurtz’s last words and so she become ignorant to the truth of what had happened to her husband. But Marlow ignores the repercussions of his lie, he doesn’t think about the fact that Kurtz Intended will now live a lie. Ignorance is the catalyst of degradation in a society, once we begin to ignore our actions and the consequences they might have we will begin to decline and ultimately
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