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The Handmaid's Short Story 'Ignorance'

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Ignorance is like going through life with shut eyes, unaware and unfamiliar. It is like a foreboding, grey cloud, – the colour of ash and soot – hanging above and blanketing people’s vision. Alternatively, in the world, ignorance has become a fluent trait in the growing population where people live through their lives in ignorant bliss because they do not take time to consider reasoning beyond a normal perspective. Ignorance does not always necessarily refer to one’s knowledge in an academic sense, but more so is one’s understanding of their surroundings and the world. Ignorance often defines and influences choices and ethics, and frequently comes from inaccurate beliefs, lack of consciousness, and misleading information; it will be people’s …show more content…

Moreover, the story follows a hunter named Eckels, living in the year 2055, and who pays $10,000 to travel back to the Jurassic era to hunt a Tyrannosaurus rex. Throughout the story, Eckels is ordered by his guides to stay off the path, and is countlessly emphasized to not “touch so much as one grass blade, flower, or tree” (P. 37). This demonstrates that even though Eckels is clearly warned by his guides that he must take care not to disturb too much of history to avoid setting off a cataclysmic chain of alterations, Eckels does not abide this advice. In addition, as pointed out by one guide – Travis – he informs him of the consequences, warning him that if Eckels did indeed stray off the path, he could potentially “kill an important animal, a small bird, a roach, a flower even, thus destroying an important link in a growing species: (P. 37). Subsequently, terrified by the appearing dinosaur, Eckels stumbles off the path and “not looking back, walked blindly to the edge of the path” (P. 41). In doing so, Eckels inadvertently makes a terrible mistake: he steps on a butterfly, and kills it, ignorant to his error and all the warnings he had previously received. Regarding this, it is …show more content…

When viewing this episode, many obvious controversial issues were noticeable. The issues involving race and gender were a clear showing of how many people in the world are ignorant to the issues involving race and gender in the world. Additionally, during the episode, an instructor is called into the office to educate the workers about diversity, and how certain comments are not acceptable in a workplace and public areas. Throughout the exercise, Michael – the manager – disagrees with most of what the instructor says, and decides to start his own diversity day training exercises. Michael decides to write a bunch of different races on notecards, and have the workers stick them to their foreheads at random. They then had to walk around and treat each other like they would any other person who is of that race. By using racial stereotypes to try and figure out their race, this exercise clearly promotes the use of racial stereotypes. For example, In the scene where Dwight and Pam try to guess their own races on their notecards, Pam says to Dwight (who is “Asian”), “Based off stereotypes which are completely untrue, you might not be a very good driver.” After Pam says this, Dwight responds with, “Oh God, am I a woman?” This scene displays complete ignorance

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