Ignorance Is Bliss

Yesterday for American Studies class, we went downtown to see the play "Clybourne Park." In the first act of the play, a white family was selling their house to an African American family, and the community did not want them to. One of the characters was a deaf woman, and I think she was the most interesting character portrayed in the play. What I found so fascinating, was how the other characters could say something to her, but she would, obviously, have no idea what they were saying, so it meant absolutely nothing to her. What they said had absolutely no meaning. In reality, I think that we do a similar thing often. If we don't want to hear something, we just cover our ears, and act like nothing was said at all, and so it has no meaning to us, either.

This reminded me of the saying "ignorance is bliss." When I looked up the exact definition of the phrase, it said "Not knowing something is often more comfortable than knowing it." This is exactly what was happening in the play, and also occurs in real life. We think that if you don't know something, it's as if it never happened at all, which we all wish were true sometimes, but of course, is not. After discussing this in class and thinking about it after the play, I kept thinking about how words have absolutely no meaning to some people (like the deaf woman), but also have absolutely no meaning at all sometimes, and that is sometimes the best for us. 

This saying "ignorance is bliss" contrasts another part in the play, where after the African American family left the house, the white man started talking poorly about them. The African American man, having just left the house, could hear them talking and came back inside very angry. If he had not heard them talk about it, it would not been a big deal at all, because he didn't know and it meant nothing to him. This ignorance probably would have been better than him hearing what they said. In this situation it was probably better to be ignorant about what they were saying, rather than hearing them.