Poem Analysis: 'Ignorance Is Bliss'

Decent Essays
It was a few years ago when I was young and wise, that someone my age but older stood and claimed jubilantly, "Ignorance is Bliss", the wonderfully dreadfully, perfect mistake people make. What is so blissful about not knowing, better yet, purposely not wanting to know truth? The idea that Ignorance is Bliss makes sense to most, I mean, yeah, the truth can hurt but think about it. Removing a band-aid fast is far better than doing so in a slow and agonizingly painful manner. The difference with knowing is that pain is temporary, pain is understood, pain shapes the future. With ignorance comes grief, misunderstanding, mistakes too late to take back, anger, pointing quavering fingers, fingers pointing and quavering at self, and overwhelmingly

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    Title: War Is Kind, about the good things war does for people and how it accommodates them positively. Paraphrase: Do not cry girl, war is good. Just because your lover got shot and his horse ran away, you shouldn’t cry. The drums of war are loud, the battlefield is full of your men who are craving a fight. These men were born to take orders and die.…

    • 322 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    At the beginning of the novel, the best example of ignorance is the main character, David Strorm. David is just a kid at this point in the book. All his life he has heard how terrible deviations are, and has had it drilled into his head countless…

    • 704 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    From John Knowles’s A Separate Peace, the reader learns that while ignorance is bliss, it is short lived and can be devastating. While Finny wants to remain innocent, he has too much knowledge to convince himself that he is still ignorant. In his hopeless attempts to fight life itself, he fails to adapt before it is too late. In his feeble battle, Finny begins with denial. This refusal leads to anger, and finally acceptance.…

    • 131 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Some people say that Ignorance is Bliss. They say this, because they don’t want to know what’s going on in the world, or so called “secrets” that they don’t want to know. There is absolutely no reason to be unaware of your surroundings. In the book, The Odyssey, a man named Odysseus leads a crew, where he has gone through so much to help them get from place to place. One of the main parts in the story is when Odysseus makes it back home.…

    • 1043 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Flowers for Algernon “Ignorance is bliss.” ~ Thomas Gray Realization happens in only two ways; all at once, or slowly; there is but one feeling that you feel. Regret. If one were given the choice of eating the Forbidden Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge or of living in blissful ignorance, what would they choose? A very curious question in its origin and idea. Thinking too much will delve into the realm of “what if”, rather than pushing that thought away and indulging in the simple pleasures of life instead.…

    • 1032 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ignorance is the lack of knowledge towards a certain subject and it can cause great conflict. This idea is presented often in the play Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, a play about a pair of star crossed lovers who fall in love and secretly get married. As problems come their way, they decide to take hasty actions. This is all due to their lack of knowledge.…

    • 778 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Why? because ignorance is a blindfold. You may think that you are happy, but that is not true happiness. So, I would definitely choose knowledge over ignorance any day. Even if that knowledge brings suffering.…

    • 486 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    James Madison's Knowledge

    • 271 Words
    • 2 Pages

    When people are ignorant they are lacking the knowledge of what is actually happening in the world. People need to know how to make changes or what is actually happening in the world, this is why knowledge is such a powerful concept. When you are knowledgeable you are not easily manipulated and can actually state…

    • 271 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Hannah Wieder Mrs. Rosario British Literature 2 February 2016 The phrase "Ignorance is bliss", holds many truths. Does the denial of knowledge in truth give humans a peace of mind? In the gothic novel, Frankenstein, Mary Shelley gives her own insight towards this question.…

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Great Essays

    One might say “An Insatiable Emptiness” is hard to read for how detailed and private does it depicts the struggle Lau suffers bulimia. Through using first person narration Lau traces her traumatizing early life experience and how has family coping twisted the conflicting psychological state within her. Lau expertly narrates the self-denying situation she is trapped in as the cause of the inescapable ritual of bulimia. It seems to this young woman that throwing up things from her stomach would eventually clear her past as well. Yet after years and years of purging and binging, the conflicts stay and they had gone worse.…

    • 1576 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ignorance is a result of a close mindset or a one track mind. The mentality of my way or the highway sort of speak. Not being open minded and realizing that there is more than one way to accomplish several tasks in the world is a leading factor to becoming ignorant or never breaking the cycle of ignorance. Using Ignorance as a street term for stupid, we can use racism for example is a form of ignorance. The mindset that one race is superior to another because of skin color, culture, language, etc. is a…

    • 614 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Silence There is nothing left but the silence burning through the your flesh – eyes, singed and wet with unending streams – the moon has set and the sun won’t rise tomorrow – running away from you, keeping its distance far and beyond your reach – you’re worthless even to nature, cowering beneath the remnants of a past desperate still to leave you behind – the silence grows louder, stronger, branding your lungs – “undeclared” – your stomach whispers to you as you sleep, the grumbling void of dissatisfaction – your nails chip away at the keyboard – tap, tap, tap as your pockets run dry and your hair falls out – another cup – another hour – another twitch of the finger, not enough to end the SILENCE that grows far beyond the boundaries – you’re…

    • 213 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Tolstoy states that ignorance, “consists in not knowing, not understanding, that life is an evil and an absurdity” (Tolstoy). He says that mainly women and young children are subject to the category of ignorance. He views these groups of people as not being capable of pondering ideas as complex as the meaning of life. They take pleasure in licking the honey and live life in a state of ignorant bliss. But Tolstoy also states that people can only stay in a state of ignorance for so long, “something will turn their attention to the dragon and the ice, and there will be an end to they're licking”…

    • 1292 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    However, I think that knowledge is not always a source of happiness. There is the old adage, “ignorance is bliss”. There are some truths that can ultimately be hurtful. For example, if I found out that my parents never told me that I was adopted, that would not give me happiness. I would be quite upset.…

    • 1091 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Knowledge does not always live up to one’s expectations. As humans, we all begin as innocent…

    • 1374 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays