Ignorance In Elie Wiesel's Cave

While in the cave there are prisoners chained facing the front of the cave. They would watch shadows which is all that they know. For them these shadows are reality, this is what they live for, this is their knowledge. One prisoner is fortunate enough to become loose from his chains and is able to look at the world outside of the cave. Although it took sometime for the prisoner to become used to life outside the cave he eventually did. He realized that what he once knew as the truth and way of life was not true. Leaving the cave and going to the real world helps describe what it means from going to ignorance to knowledge. Ignorance is something that we as people aren’t aware of, whether or not we chose to not to be aware of something, or we

In the Lemming Condition, the Lemmings were only told about the big trip west. They were ignorant by not taking into consideration what this trip really was about, they were ignorant by not asking others questions or taking the time to think through what they were about to do. The ignorant lemmings also wouldn’t let the younger lemmings as questions as was the case when Bubber asked his parents whether or not lemmings know how to swim. Bubber mentions that crow “kind of hinted that the lemmings don’t know to swim.” Bubber and the crow was just trying to gain knowledge by asking questions (like children always do) and his parents walked around the questions refusing to answer it. The ignorance of the cave is something that is present as well, all the people in the cave knew nothing but the cave. “To them, I said the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.” Just like the lemmings the people in the cave only know one way of life (their ignorance) and when questioned they will get defensive and not believe what the person arguing against their knowledge is saying. One final way we can see this is through a parent raising their child. That parent has to choose what type of knowledge they want to pass on to their young child is ignorant for the most part of their early lives. What they are able to see and hear help them develop to who they eventually become. I have a younger cousin at the age of five who isn’t developing the way other kids normally do. When my grandfather passed away this past May, we didn’t know if he knew because he has never talked before. I remember watching him turn his head around looking into the living room at the empty hospital bed and then start to cry. The point here is that children although ignorant gain knowledge through the people around them. My cousin saw all of us sad and not in the living room. He